This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I think there are two important lenses here.
Via the probability-theory lens, we must distinguish between
Under a Bayesian epistemology, the former is reasoned about using a probability density function (PDF) by which (approximately) every number between 0 and 1 is assigned a subjective probability. Then, when we observe the flip we update using the likelihood function (either
xfor heads or1-xfor tails). What you're talking about is essentially how spread out Yudkowsky's current PDF is.The other lens is markets-based, which I've touched on before. Briefly, for reason that are obvious for anyone in finance, there is a world of difference between
In real life, the bid-ask spread that market makers offer depend on a great number of factors including how informed everyone else in the market is relative to themselves. On this lens, credible intervals (or whatever phrase you want to use) are not things individuals have in isolation, they are things individuals have within a social space: if you're with a bunch of first-graders, you might have a very tight bid-ask spread when betting on whether a room-temperature superconductor was just discovered; if you're with a bunch of chemist PhDs, you're going to adopt an extremely wide spread (e.g. "somewhere between 5% and 95%").
More options
Context Copy link